Then what of the sniper-situation? If you are sniping a person who is just standing still, not aware that he's going to be shot soon, do you rule that as an auto-kill? Or do you roll the attack "flat-footed"? If you roll the attack with the target flat-footed, then all that dodging and moving around stuff doesn't hold up -- hit points protect you just the same whether you try to dodge or not.

Still going with the sniper-situation, neither Combat Pool nor a high Body score would make a difference in Shadowrun -- dodging wouldn't be allowed (since the target doesn't know he's going to be shot) and soaking a Barrett hit with Body is damn near impossible. Using d20 Modern rules, the CyberTroll would just say "Ouch" for drama, and then continue doing whatever he was doing before.

it specifically includes being shot "in the back", which i assume also covers sniping.

I'm not talking about a 7.62x51mm sniper rifle here. I'm talking about a .50BMG Barrett, which isn't really even meant to be fired at people, because all the power is wasted. With the right ammunition, it can punch through 2" of armor-grade steel at several hundred meters. It will just swoosh through a human body at 1 kilometer, leaving a 4"+ diameter crater behind. It will absolutely and totally kill any motherfucker who gets in the way, as long as you hit something vital (with .50BMG, that includes head, torso and thighs -- an arm or lower leg hit will just result in amputation).

[Pedantic]I don't think there are any "assault" rifles in 7.62x51mm, because those are called "battle" rifles.[/Pedantic] There certainly are several sniper rifles in 5.56x45 NATO, which is the most common assault rifle caliber in the world (by amount of different models, maybe not by amount of actual weapons). I don't think there are any auto-fire capable rifles in .300 Winchester Magnum, and I'm sure there aren't any in .338 Lapua Magnum. .338 Lapua Magnum would be quite enough for the purpose of killing Mr CyberTroll, however. .50BMG is more certain, and more messy.

To get things into perspective: Calibers meant for elephant-hunting generally have ~half the energy of .50BMG.

No, he couldn't, at least not "very likely". He'd have to roll 3 14s with his 16 body dice + 5 CP dice not to lose consciousness. Try it for yourself, how many times you score 3+ 14s with 21 dice.

I'm not very good at probability math, but I know that the expected (average) number of successes against 14 with 21 dice is 0.487. Getting just 1 or more success happens only 38.9% of the time. I'm guessing 3 or more successes happens about 5% or less of the time.

And that's with the worst possible hit you can get with a Barrett in SR -- just 1 success.

Not really. Even with max armor on all 4 limbs he can only hit 8 points of armor (he also needs to purchace 3 levels of Muscle Toner bioware so he can still move normally). As the barett ammo is APDS, armor is also halved so those 8 pts only mean 4pts of effective protection. The TN goes down to 10 if the troll is shot normally, meaning the troll would need body 36 to survive a single-succes shot on-average, each additional success adds 12 to the body that the troll needs.

Also: you may want to consider that the troll in the D20 system with the same mods would be able to stand even more punnishment.

[edit] why do I bother thinking about my posts? Whatever it is has already been said by the time I press the post button[/edit]

AC ammo is explosive anyway. It's still possible to gat AV assault canon rounds though.

So you believe that a d20 SR should rule that any attack on an unaware target is an autokill, no rolls neccessary?

Right. So in fact, d20 and SR are even in this respect (in either system, you can inflict any amount of damage on yourself if you wish).

The CyberTroll was built with the 25 Point Buy system. I followed every rule for chargen, I gave him the exact amount of Talents and Feats that was available, I followed every rule except in buying the gear, where I simply assumed that a 5th level Shadowrunner could afford Titanium Bone Lacing, Dermal Sheath-3 and Tactical Entry Unit Armor (after all, this was supposed to be a starting Shadowrun character, and such gear is available to starting shadowrunners). Apart from the cyberware and racial modifications (+4Str/Con, -2Dex, -4Int/Cha, quite reasonable in my mind, perhaps even a bit weak in the physical attributes), it is perfectly legal.

If such cyberware did not add to Constitution, or Hit/Vitality Points per level for the same amount, then such cyberware would be almost totally useless for high-level characters. Whether the cyberware in question adds to Constitution or the same amount of Hit/Vitality Points per level makes no difference in these examples, because the HP/VP amount stays the same, and he'll survive the Massive Damage tests anyway.

The only alterations he has are Dermal Sheath-3 and Titanium Bone Lacing so "many of those alterations" can't do anything. In SR, both of these add a point of armor, DS-3 only against one type of damage, and they don't stack. Considering how little 1 point of armor is in SR (where a light flexible body armor vest protects 3, just like it does in d20 Modern and Spycraft), it would have felt really odd to give Mr CyberTroll more than +1 Natural Armor/+1 DR.

If you think you've got a great system for porting SR cyberware and bioware into d20, let's see it.

[Edit]Actually, I think Impact Armor from DS and from Bone Lacing might indeed stack. So give the CyberTroll +2 Natural Armor/+2 Damage Reduction instead.[/Edit]

Nope. An assassination attack (known as a "death attack" in D&D 3.5) is something unique to certain classes, just like sneak attack is only allowed for certain classes. It also requires three rounds of focus on the target, a successful attack roll, and a failed Fortitude save. If the Fortitude save is made, then the attack counts just as a sneak attack, with all inherent bonuses. If this were a classless implementation, then the death attack would be a feat with some fairly steep pre-requisites.

A well-trained sniper would presumably have several extra dice available for sneak attacks and the death attack. I say "well-trained", because any shlub can pick up a gun and fire it at a target 1km away, but very few people will actually hit that target and then expect to hit it in a critical area. In truth, few people could hit that target in a critical area (sufficient to kill instantly) at 50m. This requires training that would be represented by character level, BAB, and appropriate feats & special abilities. A starting character would not (and should not) be a top sniper and they wouldn't even have access to an ability like death attack. They may luck into killing their opponent with a critical hit and they may even have an extra d6 for sneak attack, but that'd be the best they could do.

If someone without any sort of death attack ability or even sneak attack ability fired on an unsuspecting target, they would have bonuses to hit and that would be about it. They haven't specially trained to get the one-shot kill consistently and they haven't trained to hit critical areas consistently, so they get no bonus outside of +2 to hit and the target being denied all defense based on Dexterity (stats, feats, and special abilities).